Brian Koonz: For Huskies, victory means another rung up the ladder

Updated 12:47 am, Friday, January 23, 2015

STORRS -- As a kid growing up in the Crenshaw neighborhood of Los Angeles, Kevin Ollie wasn't about quitting.

Not that he had much choice. Hard work is all he's ever known.

Victory was a treasure reserved for fighters, and the toughest among them -- without exception -- was his mother, Dorothy Ollie. She was the single parent, the ordained minister and the breast cancer survivor, the superhero without a phone booth.

Or excuses.

So when the UConn men's basketball team lost back-to-back games last week, one at Tulsa and one at Stanford, Kevin Ollie never imagined anything but getting back to work.

"We just got to fight a lot harder," Ollie said the other day after practice. "We got to hit first and be tougher. It's pretty simple."

It sure looked simple Thursday night in a 67-60 victory over Central Florida before a sellout crowd of 10,167 at Gampel Pavilion.

After a meteor shower of 3-pointers -- UConn made a season-high 11, all but one in the first half -- the lead was 18 points and the Huskies were bumping chests, fists, just about anything within collision range.

Even after a 15-3 run by Central Florida cut UConn's halftime lead to 39-33, the Huskies kept passing and shooting and squeezing the clamps on defense.

Most of all, they kept hitting. And they did it first.

"Hitting first is not just physical. Hitting first is communicating, talking a lot on defense, sprinting the court on offense," said Ollie, whose team improved to 10-7 overall, 3-2 in the American. "All of that is considered hitting first.

"The majority of the game, I thought we did that. We did relax when we got up 18 and you can't do that. With five minutes to go (before halftime), that's when you got to be real greedy."

Instead, the Huskies exhaled, just as Central Florida was catching its breath in Storrs.

The air is thinner the higher you climb, Ollie understands. Now, he just has to get his team to understand it, too.

UConn senior Ryan Boatright, the Chicago point guard who finished with game-highs of 18 points and seven assists, is just like Ollie in this regard.

Same fight, different city.

"It's always disappointing when you make the game harder than it's got to be," Boatright said. "Once you get a team down by 18, you got to step on their neck and put them away."

It's all about the climb, you see: one game, one victory, one rung.

In Ollie's world, nothing is guaranteed at UConn except the ladder, the perfect metaphor for a young team.

The first rung is climbed in practice. Always. The other rungs, each 40 minutes long, hinge on a victory. Win a game, climb a rung.

And if you're really lucky -- lottery lucky -- you climb to the top of the ladder and cut down the nets in Dallas as the Huskies did last year.

Of course, that ladder was put away a long time ago.

"We got to start right now. If we want to be happy on Selection Sunday ..." Ollie said the other day after practice, his words suddenly drying up at the thought of the alternative. "Those guys -- their dreams and goals -- last year, we got in there and you see what happened.

"When you get in there, everything is done. There is no more, `Oh, you barely got in.' No. Let's go on our run. It's a new season. It's a new life.

"But we have to understand we have to take care of today and not worry about (the NCAA tournament) because if you keep letting games slip, we're not going to the NCAA tournament."

For the first time in more than a month, the Huskies were back at Gampel Pavilion, their on-campus sanctuary from the road.

The last time UConn played here, Yale did its best impersonation of Texas and dropped a 3-point dagger and a loss on the Huskies.

This time, UConn never let Central Florida (9-9, 2-5) catch the scent of an upset, even when the Knights rode the momentum into halftime.

"We've got to start taking care of the small things," Ollie said. "I showed them the tape last year. You got to hit. You can't look up in the sky thinking the ball is going to come to us.

"You got to go find your man and you got to hit and you got to be physical. The only thing I demand is effort and physicality, and I got to play the guys who are giving me that, no matter who they are, no matter what matchups I have out there."

The ladder to cut down the nets -- any nets, for that matter -- is always steep. But it's not nearly as steep as Ollie's climb would've been if he didn't fight.